Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation

We ourselves have no written code of conduct as regards the higher social life, the exclusive circles of civilized existence, which are not ruled merely by the Ten Commandments. The knowledge of what to do in those zones, and of how to do it, can come only by training, by experience, by observation, and by the intuitive recognition of the reason of things.

And now to return to the question of the authority of the Shinto priest as representative of communal [102] sentiment,—an authority which I believe to have been always very great …. Striking proof that the punishments inflicted by a community upon its erring members were originally inflicted in the name of the tutelar god is furnished by the fact that manifestations of communal displeasure still assume, in various country districts, a religious character. I have witnessed such manifestations, and I am assured that they still occur in most of the provinces. But it is in remote country-towns or isolated villages, where traditions have remained almost unchanged, that one can best observe these survivals of antique custom. In such places the conduct of every resident is closely watched and rigidly judged by all the rest. Little, however, is said about misdemeanours of a minor sort until the time of the great local Shinto festival,—the annual festival of the tutelar god. It is then that the community gives its warnings or inflicts its penalties: this at least in the case of conduct offensive to local ethics. The god, on the occasion of this festival, is supposed to visit the dwellings of his Ujiko; and his portable shrine,—a weighty structure borne by thirty or forty men,—is carried through the principal streets. The bearers are supposed to act according to the will of the god,—to go whithersoever his divine spirit directs them …. I may describe the incidents of the procession as I saw it in a seacoast village, not once, but several times.

[103] Before the procession a band of young men advance, leaping and wildly dancing in circles: these young men clear the way; and it is unsafe to pass near them, for they whirl about as if moved by frenzy …. When I first saw such a band of dancers, I could imagine myself watching some old Dionysiac revel;—their furious gyrations certainly realized Greek accounts of the antique sacred frenzy. There were, indeed, no Greek heads; but the bronzed lithe figures, naked save for loin-cloth and sandals, and most sculpturesquely muscled, might well have inspired some vase-design of dancing fauns. After these god-possessed dancers—whose passage swept the streets clear, scattering the crowd to right and left—came the virgin priestess, white-robed and veiled, riding upon a horse, and followed by several mounted priests in white garments and high black caps of ceremony. Behind them advanced the ponderous shrine, swaying above: the heads of its bearers like a junk in a storm. Scores of brawny arms were pushing it to the right; other scores were pushing it to the left: behind and before, also, there was furious pulling and pushing; and the roar of voices uttering invocations made it impossible to hear anything else. By immemorial custom the upper stories of all the dwellings had been tightly closed: woe to the Peeping Tom who should be detected, on such a day, in the impious act of looking down upon the god!…

[104] Now the shrine-bearers, as I have said, are supposed to be moved by the spirit of the god—(probably by his Rough Spirit; for the Shinto god is multiple); and all this pushing and pulling and swaying signifies only the deity's inspection of the dwellings on either hand. He is looking about to see whether the hearts of his worshippers are pure, and is deciding whether it will be necessary to give a warning, or to inflict a penalty. His bearers will carry him whithersoever he chooses to go—through solid walls if necessary. If the shrine strikes against any house,—even against an awning only,—that is a sign that the god is not pleased with the dwellers in that house. If the shrine breaks part of the house, that is a serious warning. But it may happen that the god wills to enter a house,—breaking his way. Then woe to the inmates, unless they flee at once through the back-door; and the wild procession, thundering in, will wreck and rend and smash and splinter everything on the premises before the god consents to proceed upon his round.

Upon enquiring into the reasons of two wreckings of which I witnessed the results, I learned enough to assure me that from the communal point of view, both aggressions were morally justifiable. In one case a fraud had been practised; in the other, help had been refused to the family of a drowned resident. Thus one offence had been legal; the other only moral. A country community [105] will not hand over its delinquents to the police except in case of incendiarism, murder, theft, or other serious crime. It has a horror of law, and never invokes it when the matter can be settled by any other means. This was the rule also in ancient times, and the feudal government encouraged its maintenance. But when the tutelar deity has been displeased, he insists upon the punishment or disgrace of the offender; and the offender's entire family, as by feudal custom, is held responsible. The victim can invoke the new law, if he dares, and bring the wreckers of his home into court, and recover damages, for the modern police-courts are not ruled by Shinto. But only a very rash man will invoke the new law against the communal judgment, for that action in itself would be condemned as a gross breach of custom. The community is always ready, through its council, to do justice in cases where innocence can be proved. But if a man really guilty of the faults charged to his account should try to avenge himself by appeal to a non-religious law, then it were well for him to remove himself and his family, as soon as possible thereafter, to some far-away place.

We have seen that, in Old Japan, the life of the individual was under two kinds of religious control. All his acts were regulated according to the traditions either of the domestic or of the communal [106] cult; and these conditions probably began with the establishment of a settled civilization. We have also seen that the communal religion took upon itself to enforce the observance of the household religion. The fact will not seem strange if we remember that the underlying idea in either cult was the same,—the idea that the welfare of the living depended upon the welfare of the dead. Neglect of the household rite would provoke, it was believed, the malevolence of the spirits; and their malevolence might bring about some public misfortune. The ghosts of the ancestors controlled nature;—fire and flood, pestilence and famine were at their disposal as means of vengeance. One act of impiety in a village might, therefore, bring about misfortune to all. And the community considered itself responsible to the dead for the maintenance of filial piety in every home.